Morning Coffee Reading

Boy you gotta love the way a bureaucrats mind works. Or is it just typical of this administration? When the facts don't look very promising, change the definitions...

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

I think the most telling paragraph in the story is this

The United States has set a goal of reducing the proportion of food-insecure households to 6 percent or less by 2010, or half the 1995 level, but it is proving difficult. The number of hungriest Americans has risen over the past five years. Last year, the total share of food-insecure households stood at 11 percent.

Now those facts just can't be redefined. But I can hear the report coming out of Washington next...Due to new data the percentages will be revised downward...

THE MIDTERM elections were in part a repudiation of Republican economic priorities. The economy has grown strongly for five years even though it is slowing now, but the fruits of prosperity have not been shared widely. While corporate profits and pay for people at the top have risen, the majority of the workforce has experienced a stagnation of pay that stretches back, with only brief respites, to around 1980. The Republican Party has veered between denying the data and acknowledging middle-class anxiety while offering nothing to assuage it. The Democrats have understood the nation's economic insecurity, and they have been rewarded.

Having diagnosed the problem correctly, Democrats need a prescription.

This editorial then goes on to "explain" why most of the Democrats answers to the problems wont work out unless they walk the fine line of balance. Funny how quick the shift in "accountability" after the election. One paragraph to explain the correctness of the analysis by the minority party coming into the election, then three paragraphs of what is wrong with the proposals thrown out to try and fix the problem. Seems like the level of accountability has risen a notch or two in the past week doesn't it?

Let me return to the Op-Ed that I commented on yesterday at my other blog, Blues From the Red Side of Life. It ties in with the above nicely...

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The "Wal-Marting" of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

And, damn, there's that "A" word again.

Looks like for the first time in his life George W Bush may find out what it's like to be held accountable for his actions. Sadly for both him and us, it will be the future doing the holding...And it will be us and our descendents paying the price for his policies.